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June, 2007
We celebrated Memorial Day a few days ago. As you already know, this is the day we, as a nation, have set aside to honor and reflect upon those who have sacrificed their lives – all their hopes and dreams – so that the rest of us could continue to live free! My personal way of honoring the fallen soldiers is by paying tribute to their living counterparts; those who survived the battles, and somehow made it home. On Memorial Day I visit United States Veterans. These are men and women still suffering the horrendous ravages of war. They are still dealing with mild to extreme symptoms of PTSD. They are still desperately trying to learn to live without limbs. They are the ones still haunted by nightly visions of torture and terror. They are the ones still struggling with incredible and constant pangs of guilt because they lived while their best friends did not. So, as you can sense, these Vets have been severely wounded on many levels. Bearing witness to the tremendous stress these problems are creating, not only for the Veterans, but for their families as well, can sometimes be a bit overwhelming- even for an old hard ass like me. Do you realize that we have lost 3,400 of our country’s best and brightest children, nieces and nephews, brothers and sister, moms and dads to the wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? In May 2007, we had the highest recorded death toll in a single month with 110 American soldiers killed. Now, when you add that to the 25,000 who have been wounded (since the start of this insanity) and the 60,000 leaving this world on a monthly basis (Veterans who served in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam and Desert Storm I), don’t you think it’s time to rethink how we are dealing with the aftermath of combat? From my point of view, we are failing miserably at our responsibility to address the immediate and long term needs of our nation’s Veterans. When you look at the results of serving in combat you begin to see exactly how futile war is, for all of us. The insidious physical and emotional damage perpetrated upon human beings, on all sides, is unconscionable! Well, this Memorial Day I spent the afternoon at a Veteran’s Recovery Center where they were celebrating the holiday over a barbeque feast of hot dogs and hamburgers. I was in charge of spooning the potato salad! After lunch, I sat down to talk with a guy named Robert, who had served 13 years in the Army – two tours in Bosnia, one tour in Afghanistan and two tours in Iraq. Robert told me that it had been his life’s dream to retire from the Army after completing 20 years. But when the time came around to re-up, he knew he’d have to go back to Iraq, and that was just more than he could face. He’d had enough! Robert was not just a foot soldier, he was a platoon leader; a bona fide leader among men who’d been decorated with both a Bronze and Silver Star. Now, for those of you who don’t know what it means to receive a Bronze and Silver Star – it means Robert was one valiant, tough and brave SOB! So, why was he living in a Veteran’s Recovery Center, spending Memorial Day away from his family? Well, he told me he got out of the service, but was not given any counseling or tools to help him readjust to civilian life. Nonetheless, he secured a job and tried to reconstruct a ‘normal life’ again yet, he couldn’t understand why he didn’t sleep at night, and often found tears streaming down his face, for no reason. Soon, he started to neglect his wife and child until one day he happened upon a beautiful gift - a few moments of temporary amnesia in the form of methamphetamine. You see, those last few months Robert spent in Iraq, it had been his job to bag the body parts of those who wouldn’t be coming home. Some of those body parts belonged to friends of his. Some had been guys he’d known for over seven years. No wonder Robert needed to forget what he’d seen! In the course of the next three hours, I talked with maybe ten other Veterans (men and women) who had been going through varying degrees the same problem. They all concluded that at least 90% of all soldiers who served two tours or more were struggling in the same agonizing way. Whew…this was really difficult for me to face. Even worse yet, it is known that 107 active duty soldiers have committed suicide within the last four years. And no one is keeping a count on those Veterans who took their lives after leaving the military. So, it appears that we are sending them off to fight, bringing them home and all the time we’re acting like we’re appreciative and we care. But in reality, what we’ve done is destroy the lives of young men and women who choose to defend their country, and then left them to their own defenses, without any ways or means of putting all the pieces of their lives back together again. And all the while the powers that be continue to wage war, and the military industrial complex continues to get rich, and the American public is fed more and more lies. What is it going to take for us to think war unthinkable? We’ve got to stand up and demand to be heard – it’s now or never, Friends. I urge you to write you congressperson and call for an end to this war. Let us make a unified effort to stop the insanity. It is all in our hands now. Dannion Visit the That Ain't Nothin' Archives
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That Ain't
Nothin'
